Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Climate

How Worried Should We Be About Hail?

On the question insurers are asking, UAW’s Mercedes vote, and childhood asthma

How Worried Should We Be About Hail?
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Flooding killed nearly 100 people in Afghanistan over the weekend • Streets turned into rivers in southern Germany after heavy rain • It’s 110 degrees Fahrenheit in Delhi today, and the rest of the week will be hotter.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Hail damage is making insurers nervous

Hail damage accounted for between 50% and 80% of the $64 billion in insured storm costs worldwide last year, according to international reinsurance firm Swiss Re. As storms become more frequent and more severe due to climate change, insurers are beginning to factor hail into their risk assessments on policies, Bloombergreported. Such a move could result in higher rates for policyholders. Other customers could lose insurance altogether. Some insurers are “nervous to touch big solar farms” because of the incredible damage hail can do to solar panels. One insurer has started testing the durability of various panels by pummeling them with “industrially produced hail” and seeing how well they hold up.

2. Mercedes workers in Alabama reject unionization push

Mercedes-Benz workers at a plant in Alabama voted last week against joining the United Auto Workers union. Just 2,045 workers out of about 5,000 voted in favor of unionizing, marking what Reuterscalled a “stinging loss” for the UAW, which has been pushing hard to expand membership across southern states after its contract deals with the Big Three in 2023. UAW also has its eyes on Tesla as a target for unionization. Last month the UAW found victory at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee, where 73% of workers voted to unionize. But the results in Alabama are “a big setback,” explained NPR. Mercedes ran an aggressive anti-union campaign to convince workers to vote no, and Alabama politicians “framed the union vote as a threat to the state’s economic success.”

3. Study: Heat waves are triggering asthma attacks in kids

A new study suggests extreme heat is leading to more hospital visits for children who have asthma. The researchers had access to hospital admission data for young asthma patients within the University of California, San Francisco Benioff Children’s Hospitals. They looked at whether the children who were admitted lived in an area that was experiencing a heat wave when they got sick, and found that “daytime heat waves were significantly associated with 19% higher odds of children’s asthma hospital visits, and longer duration of heat waves doubled the odds of hospital visits.” More than 4.5 million children have the lung condition in the U.S.

4. Public charging infrastructure isn’t keeping pace with EV growth

A report from The Washington Post confirms what many drivers of electric vehicles probably already know: Public charging infrastructure in the U.S. isn’t growing fast enough. For every public charging point in the country, there are more than 20 EVs. Compare that to 2016, when there were seven EVs for each charging point, and it becomes clear charger installations aren’t matching growing demand. “As Americans purchase more and more EVs, public chargers will be essential to support long road trips, help apartment-dwellers go electric and alleviate overnight pressure on electricity grids,” the Post reported. President Biden has a goal of installing half a million charging stations by 2030 and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocated $5 billion for states to kickstart that effort, but as of March, only seven stations had been built in four states as a result of the program.

5. First Solar becomes world’s most valuable solar company

First Solar recently became the world’s most valuable solar company, Bloombergreported. This is the first time in six years a U.S. firm has claimed the position over Chinese rivals. Stock gains on Friday helped the company overtake Sungrow Power Supply, which saw its shares fall at the same time. First Solar is the biggest U.S. manufacturer of solar panels. While its valuation is up, and U.S. solar firms will get a boost from higher tariffs on Chinese clean tech goods, “by most other metrics, including the vital one of being able to produce enough clean energy to fight climate change, First Solar still has a way to go to catch up with its Chinese counterparts,” Bloomberg said.

THE KICKER

“The chances of politicians acting swiftly are probably better than they have been in the past. Not because of new scientific findings, but because solar, wind, and batteries have become so cheap so fast that the amount of pain involved in the transition to clean energy is far less than it would have been a decade ago. We could actually do this.”Bill McKibben on remaining optimistic, even as the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius seems further out of reach.

Yellow

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Politics

Elon Musk Pulled the Plug on America’s Energy Soft Power

For now at least, USAID’s future looks — literally — dark.

Trump pulling a plug.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Elon Musk has put the U.S. Agency for International Development through the woodchipper of his de facto department this week in the name of “efficiency.” The move — which began with a Day One executive order by President Trump demanding a review of all U.S. foreign aid that was subsequently handed off to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — has resulted in the layoff or furloughing of hundreds of USAID employees, as well as imperiled the health of babies and toddlers receiving medical care in Sudan, the operations of independent media outlets working in or near despotic regimes, and longtime AIDS and malaria prevention campaigns credited with saving some 35 million lives. (The State Department, which has assumed control of the formerly independent agency, has since announced a “confounding waiver process … [to] get lifesaving programs back online,” ProPublica reports.) Chaos and panic reign among USAID employees and the agency’s partner organizations around the globe.

The alarming shifts have also cast enormous uncertainty over the future of USAID’s many clean energy programs, threatening to leave U.S. allies quite literally in the dark. “There are other sources of foreign assistance — the State Department and the Defense Department have different programs — but USAID, this is what they do,” Tom Ellison, the deputy director for the Center for Climate and Security, a nonpartisan think tank, told me. “It is central and not easily replaced.”

Keep reading...Show less
Blue
Spotlight

Trump Has Paralyzed Renewables Permitting, Leaked Memo Reveals

The American Clean Power Association wrote to its members about federal guidance that has been “widely variable and changing quickly.”

Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Chaos within the Trump administration has all but paralyzed environmental permitting decisions on solar and wind projects in crucial government offices, including sign-offs needed for projects on private lands.

According to an internal memo issued by the American Clean Power Association, the renewables trade association that represents the largest U.S. solar and wind developers, Trump’s Day One executive order putting a 60-day freeze on final decisions for renewable energy projects on federal lands has also ground key pre-decisional work in government offices responsible for wetlands and species protection to a halt. Renewables developers and their representatives in Washington have pressed the government for answers, yet received inconsistent information on its approach to renewables permitting that varies between lower level regional offices.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
The Deepseek logo on wires.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

It took the market about a week to catch up to the fact that the Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek had released an open-source AI model that rivaled those from prominent U.S. companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic — and that, most importantly, it had managed to do so much more cheaply and efficiently than its domestic competitors. The news cratered not only tech stocks such as Nvidia, but energy stocks, as well, leading to assumptions that investors thought more-energy efficient AI would reduce energy demand in the sector overall.

But will it really? While some in climate world assumed the same and celebrated the seemingly good news, many venture capitalists, AI proponents, and analysts quickly arrived at essentially the opposite conclusion — that cheaper AI will only lead to greater demand for AI. The resulting unfettered proliferation of the technology across a wide array of industries could thus negate the energy efficiency gains, ultimately leading to a substantial net increase in data center power demand overall.

Keep reading...Show less
Green